Yesterday, I am proud to say, we participated in the Concert Across America. This event was sponsored by Faiths United To Prevent Gun Violence. The idea was that people all across the country would sing songs and/or listen to music on the theme of peace. It was a musical statement about the tragedy of the epidemic of gun violence in our land and about God’s call to peace and justice. The goal is to contribute in some small way towards creating a culture that rejects violence and actively promotes the value of love.

So we sang a few songs, and I said something about what we were doing in my sermon. The service went well. And I wonder what we actually accomplished.

But Christ tells us that God’s kingdom is like a mustard seed. It starts small, and then it grows. My impression is that more and more people are recognizing the epidemic of gun violence for what it is. More and more people are speaking out in favor of a different way. Hopefully Christian people are particularly committed to the way of Christ, the way of peace and love, not violence.

I do not know what we accomplished. But I continue to act in the hope and the faith that some action is better than none, that we may have an impact we cannot see, and that God’s will will someday truly be done. So we keep at it. And, with God’s help, maybe we can all learn to be a little better at striving for justice and peace among all people and respecting the dignity of every human being. May it be so. Amen.

I am just back from an overnight camping trip, during which I had an amazing encounter. About suppertime, a man named Michael wandered by my campsite. He was about my age, a little taller and trimmer than I, with long hair flowing lose, and very bad teeth. He told me he had constructed a home for himself on public land not far from where I was camping. He had been there since last November, but was going to have to move soon since the Power Company was about to push back the tree line, exposing his home. He invited me to check out his home the next morning. I promised to think about it, without much intending to do so.

The next morning, I changed my mind, and I was really glad I did! Michael’s home was amazing, and I cannot do it justice. For the winter, he built himself (in a week) a mostly stone structure, supplemented with wood and a tarp and including a chimney. He said it was plenty warm all winter, indeed often too warm. A small fire would heat the stones, which kept the whole space heated. He sometimes had to open the flaps to let in the winter air! Come summer, he built a separate platform next door, where he pitched a good-sized tent, which was cooler.

But the really amazing thing was his complex of rock structures. The first was basically square—maybe four feet to a side and about 10 feet tall. In the center, he told me, was a heart stone. This structure represented human pain and the human shadow. He built it strong because that is how the shadow is. His hope is that by externalizing it and localizing it, he would ease people’s pain.

The next structure was the human intellect. It was square and a good bit smaller, with a visible heart stone and also a head stone. Opposite the intellect was another structure, not entirely complete, representing human emotions. It will be a pair of parallel arches on top of stacked stones. He showed me the heart and head stones, but they are not installed yet. Connecting all three was a circular enclosure maybe six feet in diameter and 2 feet tall. Inside were crushed rocks (which he had crushed from granite) and larger stones you could stand on. It represented the unity of the human person. Directly in front was a kind of altar. He mentioned, but we didn’t go into details, that you could use it to travel in time and dimensions.

Each structure faced east to greet the rising sun, the source of power. He began construction on a blood moon. The side structures (intellect and emotion) were located beneath separate stars. The back of the circle drew up earth power, and the front of the altar drew down star power.

He told me this was his sixth installation on public land, and his biggest to date. The whole thing was incredibly impressive, and I don’t really know what to think about it. On the one hand, his stone constructions are built to last. The complex may be standing in centuries. On the other hand, he leaves, and who knows what fate awaits it? His stones may be removed in a week. Michael seemed OK with that.

Michael clearly does his own thing. He strikes me as content and well-integrated, and as a visionary, and also as a crazy homeless person. Was this how Jesus struck his contemporaries?

The newspaper reported this morning that Mother Teresa has been declared a saint. I don’t really know much about her—nothing beyond the kind of thing you can pick up from reading newspapers. But she was clearly a remarkable person. Somehow she managed to make working with the very poor newsworthy!

Virtually everyone admires Saint Teresa (it will take me a little while to get used to dropping the “Mother”!), and rightly so. But that, too, is remarkable. As Pope Francis said at the canonization ceremony, she forced world leaders to confront the “crimes of poverty they themselves created.” And yet she was universally loved!

But the thing that strikes me most strongly was her prolonged “dark night of the soul.” Many Christian writers have talked about the suffering that great saints often experience when God seems to withdraw from them—that is the “dark night.” In Saint Teresa’s case, the dark night apparently lasted decades. Year after year she did God’s work without feeling a strong sense of God’s presence. In my view, her long dark night makes her equally long, dedicated service all the more impressive.

There is a lesson in that for all of us. Part of the lesson, of course, is that we should all do our best to help the weakest, the most vulnerable, the people who suffer. That is the Christian life she modeled. But the second part of the lesson, which Saint Teresa only really taught after her death, when the publication of her journals revealed her long dark night, is that Christianity is not defined by how we feel.

Feeling God’s presence, experiencing a spiritual high, is a wonderful gift. But our relationship with God is not based on a continuous spiritual high just like our relationship with a spouse is not based on a continuous adolescent crush. Genuine love usually offers enormous emotional rewards. But genuine love is more defined by a continuous act of the will, a continuous decision to remain in relationship, a continuous commitment to the hard work of living out a relationship. The true test of love is whether it can endure the ebbing of the emotional rewards. If so, the emotional rewards usually flow back. But, as Saint Teresa teaches us, true love can endure even if the emotional rewards do not flood back. For that lesson, coming from a person of such obvious sanctity, we should all be grateful.

Before I was a priest, I taught religion at a small college in Georgia. That means that I came into the priesthood with a strong commitment to religious education at every level, certainly including for adults.

As best I can tell, many adults are interested in exploring their faith. But often they do not know how. Many Christians effectively stop learning about their faith when they graduate from Sunday School. That means lots of Christians have an adolescent understanding of Christianity, no matter how smart and well-educated they may be in other respects. And many, particularly those who are smart and well-educated, are very uncomfortable acknowledging how little they actually know.

That means a couple of things for the contemporary Church. First, we need to take Sunday School seriously! For a lot of people, that will be their last true religious education. And, second, we need to offer non-threatening opportunities for adults to learn more.

Adult education is particularly important today. Not so long ago, our culture promoted a general religious literacy. Most Americans knew at least a little something about Christianity and the Bible even if they never went to Sunday School. Today that is no longer true. In addition, today our faith faces more serious intellectual challenges than probably at any time in the last 1500 years.

I have been thinking about this because I realized that the Episcopal Churches in our area are offering a LOT of adult formation opportunities in September. At Saint David’s, we will begin an occasional, five-part series on the Episcopal Way with a first session on “Our Foundation: Holy Scripture.” Full details are available elsewhere on this webpage.

Across the river, Saint Andrew’s, Longmeadow is hosting three sessions on Christians and Muslims in the Middle East. That series will cover the contemporary refugee crisis, the persecution of Iraqi Christians, and the history of Christian-Muslim relations in Syria. It should be really interesting.

Finally, the Diocese is sponsoring an anti-racism workshop called “Towards the Beloved Community” on Saturday, September 24 at All Saints, South Hadley. (There is more information about this program on our webpage as well.)

Those are just the programs that involve me in some way. I am sure there are others. I am proud of our Churches for taking seriously the need to provide real Christian education opportunities. And I hope lots of people will take advantage of them!!